This article is from page 2 of the 2005-11-01 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 2 JPG
ALMOST half of the 500 workers at Shannon Airport have been told that they must take voluntary redundancy, or the airport will have no future.
Currently, Shannon workers are con- sidering the most swingeing cuts in the airport’s 60-year history, in order that Shannon doesn’t accumulate losses of €137 million over the next 10 years.
A ‘survival plan’ circulated to workers by the Dublin Airport Authority (DAA), states that the current situation is “unsus- tainable’ and that “this serious underly- ing financial crisis is untenable to both management of Shannon and the DAA’.
But SIPTU representatives say that plans to outsource many of the jobs at the airport are ‘not a runner in this en- abKoyenee oss
SIPTU’s Tony Kenny said that the un-
ion views plans to outsource catering entirely and other jobs in security and maintenance as ‘comparable to the Irish Ferries situation.’
Nor is the union willing to bend to a deadline of having negotiations conclud- ed by November 16. “Any deadline is a company deadline. All negotiations will be through the trade union and we will be going to third party intervention if that is what is needed,’ said Kenny.
In the €10 million redundancy plan, long service workers stand to secure pay-offs of up to €100,000.
Airport sources have revealed that all but a handful of workers boycotted management briefings on the matter and workers in one department returned the plan to management in a cardboard box.
The document, ‘Programme for Com- mercial Viability Shannon Aijrport’, states that Shannon Airport is on course to make a profit of €3 million this year,
but only because of US military traffic.
It states that in the preceding three years, Shannon made an accumulated loss of €9.3 million. By 2014, the air- port will have an accumulated loss of €137 million, which excludes interest on existing debt. Some €85 million will be needed on capital expenditure over the next ten years.
It states Shannon must generate new traffic stream; have flexibility on work practices and non-core activities and rig- orous management of costs.
The severance package will only be available if the measures can be agreed and substantially implemented by year end.
Tony Kenny said that the “DAA is proposing to outsource functions from profitable areas of the airport, which is nonsensical.”